I Saw The Tv Glow Quotes

The big color television set was on, glowing eerily over the bottles of rye and bourbon, and that was how I happened to witness the event. I saw the two padded figures take their first steps in that airless world, bouncing like toys over the landscape, driving a golf cart through the dust, planting a flag in the eye of what had once been the goddess of love and lunacy. Radiant Diana, I thought, image of what is dark within us. Then the president spoke. In a solemn, deadpan voice he declared this to be the greatest event since the creation of man. The old-timers at the bar laughed when they heard this, and I believe I managed to crack a smile or two myself. But for all the absurdity of that remark, there was one thing no one could challenge: since the day he was expelled from Paradise, Adam had never been this far from home.

When she finally reached it, she bent forward and looked through the peephole. Jay was grinning back at her from outside. Her heart leaped for a completely different reason. She set aside her crutches and quickly unbolted the door to open it. "What took you so long?" Her knee was bent and her ankle pulled up off the ground. She balanced against the doorjamb. "What d'you think, dumbass?" she retorted smartly, keeping her voice down so she wouldn't alert her parents. "You scared the crap out of me, by the way. My parents are already in bed, and I was all alone down here." "Good!" he exclaimed as he reached in and grabbed her around the waist, dragging her up against him and wrapping his arms around her. She giggled while he held her there, enjoying everything about the feel of him against her. "What are you doing here? I thought I wouldn't see you till tomorrow." "I wanted to show you something!" He beamed at her, and his enthusiasm reached out to capture her in its grip. She couldn't help smiling back excitedly. "What is it?" she asked breathlessly. He didn't release her; he just turned, still holding her gently in his arms, so that she could see out into the driveway. The first thing she noticed was the officer in his car, alert now as he kept a watchful eye on the two of them. Violet realized that it was late, already past eleven, and from the look on his face, she thought he must have been hoping for a quiet, uneventful evening out there. And then she saw the car. It was beautiful and sleek, painted a glossy black that, even in the dark, reflected the light like a polished mirror. Violet recognized the Acura insignia on the front of the hood, and even though she could tell it wasn't brand-new, it looked like it had been well taken care of. "Whose is it?" she asked admiringly. It was way better than her crappy little Honda. Jay grinned again, his face glowing with enthusiasm. "It's mine. I got it tonight. That's why I had to go. My mom had the night off, and I wanted to get it before..." He smiled down at her. "I didn't want to borrow your car to take you to the dance." "Really?" she breathed. "How...? I didn't even know you were..." She couldn't seem to find the right words; she was envious and excited for him all at the same time. "I know right?" he answered, as if she'd actually asked coherent questions. "I've been saving for...for forever, really. What do you think?" Violet smiled at him, thinking that he was entirely too perfect for her. "I think it's beautiful," she said with more meaning than he understood. And then she glanced back at the car. "I had no idea that you were getting a car. I love it, Jay," she insisted, wrapping her arms around his neck as he hoisted her up, cradling her like a small child." "I'd offer to take you for a test-drive, but I'm afraid that Supercop over there would probably Taser me with his stun gun. So you'll have to wait until tomorrow," he said, and without waiting for an invitation he carried her inside, dead bolting the door behind him. He settled down on the couch, where she'd been sitting by herself just moments before, without letting her go. There was a movie on the television, but neither of them paid any attention to it as Jay reclined, stretching out and drawing her down into the circle of his arms. They spent the rest of the night like that, cradled together, their bodies fitting each other perfectly, as they kissed and whispered and laughed quietly in the darkness. At some point Violet was aware that she was drifting into sleep, as her thoughts turned dreamlike, becoming disjointed and fuzzy and hard to hold on to. She didn't fight it; she enjoyed the lazy, drifting feeling, along with the warmth created by the cocoon of Jay's body wrapped protectively around her. It was the safest she'd felt in days...maybe weeks... And for the first time since she'd been chased by the man in the woods, her dreams were free from monsters.

Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. This is what we’re after. This is worth giving up the rooting-tooting boots for: belief, togetherness, equality. This is why people get obsessed with festivals, or clubs, or drugs, or football, or other temporal approximations of togetherness; these distilled vials of the elixir are craved by our starved souls. I’m as materialistic as the next man, probably more, given that the next man is George Orwell, and I am prepared to relinquish my trinkets for a shot at living in that ramshackle paradise. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. Orwell wrote this in the mid-thirties. Consider how radically capitalism has advanced since then. In his great dystopian fiction 1984, Orwell described a totalitarian regime where humans were constantly observed, scrutinized, and manipulated, where freedom had been entirely eroded, omnipotent institutions dominated, and every home glowed with the mandatory TV screen streaming state-sponsored data. Well, he was spot on, aside from a bit of glitter and the fact that we voluntarily install our own screens. Orwell saw this brief period in Spanish history as a potential template for an alternative future. Ordinary workers took over their businesses and factories and ran them democratically. Naturally, they were brutally massacred by a multitude of enemies—the fascists, communists, and liberal democracies all coiled about them in a terrified asphyxiating clench. I’d never heard of this Revolution. The reason for this is, of course, that it’s so fucking inspiring. The Revolutions that we’re taught about are ones that wind neatly back to repression of one flavor or another and convey the bleak, despairing narrative that makes the forms of impoverishment we live with now, whether financial or spiritual, seem preferable. No one, absolutely no one, will tell you that an alternative is possible, and the ways and means are strewn all about us. A lot of other political struggles and social uprisings labeled “Revolutions” are, in my mind, unworthy of the term, in that they were simply a hegemonic exchange. Whether it’s the Russian Revolution, which led to Stalinism, or the American Revolution, which led to corporate oligarchy. The Revolution we advocate ought to have two irrefutable components: 1) nonviolence, and 2) the radical improvement of the quality of life for ordinary people.